


oh, you know

by saltlamppillar



Category: Stoker (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28136427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltlamppillar/pseuds/saltlamppillar
Summary: This time her context is a living, breathing thing. It is spiteful, and bored. It follows her from room to room. It plays the piano. It does not find her interesting at all.
Relationships: Evelyn Stoker & India Stoker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	oh, you know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [derwent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/derwent/gifts).



> I hope this fits the bill, a very happy holidays to you!

Evelyn is very tired.

Staring down at the bundle in her arms she feels ageless, without context. She can breathe a sigh of relief: her identity now is this, is nothing but a body thoroughly changed like the shed skin of an insect to honour this fresh, small thing. Her baby is entirely dependent on her for food, for warmth, but it is that dependence which Evelyn wraps around herself like a thick blanket to settle, finally. Nobody will ask her who she is now, who she was. She will tell them all she is a mother and that will be enough.

She used to think lying was the best way around the constant questioning, the small talk and date talk and pillow talk. She would light a cigarette under the interrogation light of another pair of eyes and tell them she used to be a dancer, that she never had the projection for acting but she could tell a story with her body––but then came the accident, and now she’s here with you.  _ But enough about me. _

The men who liked to talk about themselves, which was most of them, those she could handle. But there were so many who wanted to know more. She was so interesting, so very interesting.

No, not a dancer. She was a receptionist, went to secretarial school but crashed out when she couldn’t make rent. Worked her way up. Cut and dry, nothing juicy, nothing  _ interesting. _

In time she stopped lying, started evading. ‘Oh, you know, this and that… I’ve been around… I won’t bore you with the details...’ A flourish of the wrist, a sip of wine, lipstick on the rim. The trick was to be so very present in the moment that they couldn’t see beyond it. In theatrical magic they call it misdirection; Evelyn calls it a vee neck and a necklace. Then she calls it a marriage.

Now, a baby in her arms, she’ll never be so very interesting again. She is finally, blissfully trimmed like fat from the sides of her own life.

-

India doesn’t ask her any questions. She asks her father plenty: please Daddy what’s that tree called where do birds go in the Winter how does an orbit work please––

India does not ask her to unspool herself into the space between them. There is so much space between them. Evelyn cannot remember when it was not so and knows better than to reach backwards for memories. She cannot be accurate enough in her bearings to guarantee she won’t stumble across something else instead.

India was a new context, the whole story, I am a mother and that’s that. Evelyn hadn’t counted on it being so fucking unsatisfying.

This time she cannot have a fresh start, another state, misdirection. This time her context is a living, breathing thing. It is spiteful, and bored. It follows her from room to room. It plays the piano. It does not find her interesting at all.

Evelyn sees India’s boxes of shoes and thinks she ought to set fire to such a comprehensive archive of time and memory. Everyone grows, she almost says, why would you want to live with your smaller self in your closet?

-

It makes Evelyn sick to learn about Richard’s life in the wake of it. She wishes she could unlearn everything, become a baby herself, or a doll. She pictures herself, dead and beautiful, and a living husband learning everything about her. So many things get buried alive, Richard isn’t even very special. She still feels sick.

It is hours before she hears the snick of the latch. She doesn’t move from the floor, only whispers  _ ‘Honey, I’m home’  _ with a wet snort.

The shoes are ridiculous. She does not remember what kind of shoes she wore at India’s age. She sinks back into her body and that knowledge, almost smiling.

India has wrapped herself in context: her shoes, skirt, belt. She takes all the skin Evelyn would shed if she were her and slips back into it, never mind how distended it is around her. Father, mother, uncle––she carries them. Evelyn can’t decide if that makes her stronger or infinitely more pathetic. She’s not sure which is worse.

She has been so angry with her daughter. It is an anger with context, growing larger with time. It needs to be hacked away at the root.

She sleeps.

-

Evelyn wakes up in the passenger seat.

She does not ask how she got there. She will not let her daughter be interesting.

Still, she has been taken along for the ride, like a skirt; belt; shoes. She is India’s context, the skin she refuses to shed. She supposes she prefers it this way, she is very very tired of being the one doing the shedding.

She sits, and she dozes, and she does not ask any questions; nor is she asked them.

This would, of course, be so much easier if she were dead. She thinks she could still slip into nothing even now, awake and smelling of antiseptic, but there is something stopping her from trying. One last attempt, she thinks. She will make one last attempt at starting again, becoming new instead of nothing. She can be blank again, for India. She’s done it once before.

India will let her, she thinks.

-

They pull into a hotel parking lot in the small hours of the morning. This time Evelyn is awake to feel India moving her. She is strong, strange.

Evelyn can feel India staring down at her where she is curled in her lap, foetal and still.

She thinks perhaps she can forget that India is her daughter. Perhaps she can do it again, nobody asking who she is, who she was. She does not want to want anything at all. India strokes her hair, nails a little too long, catching and pulling.

She cannot lie to India, she cannot evade her. She can only lay here, just born, just made. Perhaps she will cry. Later.

Right now she is very, very tired.


End file.
